Never Look Back
by Russet022
Summary: These are just a few stories of the nameless that the Doctor leaves in his wake as he runs, shifting paths and changing worlds and never looking back. Various Doctors may make appearances.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: The Doctor and the swarm are not mine. There are no spoilers, though this story was inspired by too much thinking about "A Good Man Goes to War," and wondering just what effect the Doctor must have on the countless people he encounters. Hopefully the first of a series of short pieces about the nameless who are left behind.

Never Look Back

1.

She drew her sword, knowing it would be the last thing she ever held. These creatures were mindless eating machines, like the legends of locusts in the plagues in the history of the far-away home planet Earth. Backing further under the cover of the overhang, she carefully drew her other sword. She felt better for a wall at her back, a roof over her head, and two good, sharp swords in her hands.

She took a deep breath. It wasn't easy, she found, this waiting for death. She'd been training for combat since she'd been old enough to both pay attention and hold a practice sword the right way up. But this—this wasn't combat. There was no ritual, no battlefield, no enemy just as well-trained and as frightened as you. No one had ever prepared her for these long moments of knowing that she would soon be eaten alive.

She could hear the sounds of thousands of powerful jaws tearing through everything in the path of the swarm. Metal flashed in the sun that shone mercilessly on fields as they were devoured, reduced to dust. She resisted the urge to run. She'd been in the observatory, and had seen her family mown down in the far fields. If she ran into the open, she had no more chance than they.

The tearing sound was closer now, the flashes brighter. She raised her swords as the wind rose and one repeated flash nearly blinded her. When her vision cleared, however, there was an inexplicable blue box in front of her. The creatures were still a ways off, though growing steadily nearer.

The door of the large box opened and a strangely dressed man stepped out. He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender when he saw her swords pointed at his throat.

"Ah. Hello!" he said brightly—too brightly for a man facing a frightened, angry young woman pointing two swords at him. "I'm looking for a wormhole. Have you seen it?"

"A what?" she asked suspiciously.

"A rupture in space," the man said, agitatedly running a hand through his brown hair. "It should be around here somewhere…" He turned his gaze to the middle distance, eyes scanning for something.

"Is that how those creatures came through?" she asked, lowering her weapons slightly.

"Yes, and it is how they will leave," he said, eyes settling on a point just beyond her family's house. "So, if you'll excuse me—"

She lifted her swords again, threateningly. "So you can—what—keep them here until the planet is destroyed? Besides, they didn't come from near here…"

He sighed. "It doesn't matter where they came through…and no. I'm not here to destroy the planet. It's far too late for that." He started to walk away, but she blocked him. He rolled his eyes, adding, "A long time ago, I diverted the path of the wormhole to an uninhabited system. They must have gone through it more quickly than I thought."

"So they've done this before and you didn't destroy _them_ and now you've brought them here. You're some sort of alien, destroying planets," she hissed.

"No, no, no," he said. "I wanted to stop them destroying inhabited planets—"

He was cut off as one of the creatures slammed into the blue box. He glanced at it, then he looked back at her and said urgently, "Run!"

"Where?" She stabbed at one of the creatures, her sword bouncing off the metal exterior. "What are they? Robots?" She gasped as it caught her blade with sharp teeth and, pulling it from her grip, apparently ate it.

"No, they secrete a metal exoskeleton. In here," he said, dragging her into his box, as another of the creatures yanked her remaining sword from her hand. "I'll see if I can't shift the wormhole without getting a closer look…" Still mumbling he ran deeper into the room. She stopped, stunned at the size of the room beyond. She didn't know what to say, and the moment for asking anything passed. He was already at the central controls, hair flying, feet skidding as he madly threw switches and pressed buttons. Then he pulled a monitor around, typed something into what must have been a keyboard, and exclaimed, "Haha, gotcha!"

From outside came the sound of tearing wood and crashing glass. "That was my house," she whispered. "They're _eating_ my house…" He paid no attention; he was focused on punching more buttons. Then he glanced up and smiled.

"That should do it," he said. "Wormhole's locked onto another, larger set of uninhabited planets. Where would you like to go? We can go…anywhere." He'd obviously meant this statement to be impressive. He was still smiling, staring at her expectantly.

She felt vulnerable without her weapons. She glanced back at the door, where she could still hear the swarm rushing past, teeth gnashing over what was left of the house. "Home," she said.

His smile became fixed. "I'm so sorry, but it was lost the moment those things broke through your atmosphere. There was nothing I could—"

"I know," she snapped, angrily dashing tears from her eyes. Soldiers didn't cry. Not when there was still a war being fought for the outer colonies…

They stood in silence, except for the hum of his machine. Finally, she said, "My brother. I've a brother in the inner colonies." She drew herself up. "Take me to him."

"Of course," the man said quietly. A few very bumpy, uncomfortable minutes later, she opened the door of the box and stared out at her brother's mine. She could see him, leaning against the door of his workstation. About to run to him, she abruptly turned back. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," he said, which wasn't an answer at all. Teeth clenched, head held high, she turned away and walked into her new life. She could still remember this Doctor's emphatic instruction to run when there had been nowhere to go, mocking her for wanting to do exactly as he said. So she walked, refusing to give this Doctor the satisfaction of seeing her flee.

Even years later, she dreamt of that day. And when people asked, for they never stopped asking, how she'd escaped the destruction of the entire planet when no one else had, she told them about the nightmare Doctor, who shifted paths and changed worlds, and, above all, ran and never looked back.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: The Doctor is not mine.

Never Look Back

2.

She cried to drive the rain away. It never worked because the rain was a constant beyond her control, but she always felt better after she'd cried. It didn't make this anger go away either. Though it pushed the pressure back for a while, it always came back.

She never used to be so angry at everything— at the weather, her homework, her friends and their opinions… Everywhere she went, she was followed by an unshakable irritation with the world. Her teachers had written home about her attitude, the first time any teacher had written home about any problems, and now she was grounded.

So she sat in her room and wrote bad poetry, though she tended to break pencil points, leak ink, and rip her paper to shreds. And then she would cry in frustration because she couldn't explain to herself what was wrong, let alone explain it to her parents. And every day it rained, and she cried harder.

Months passed. She seethed and she cried, and her parents decided that grounding her wasn't working, so she was allowed to go out, though no one really wanted her anymore. One day, she found herself sitting on a bench in the park in the misting drizzle, as far from the other teens in the park as she could be. She was scratching in the mud with a stick, drawing angry squiggles and thinking dark thoughts when a man dropped onto the bench beside her. She glanced at him; he paid her no attention, staring out at the others in the park with angry blue eyes. He seemed to hate the laughter as much as she did.

Swallowing, she inched away. He looked vaguely disreputable, with a ridiculously short haircut and a leather jacket. More than that, he radiated a sense of distance. She had run out of bench, and was about to get up nervously when he turned, pinning her like a deer in the headlights with his gaze.

Carefully, eyes holding hers, he lifted an arm. She flinched. The next second, he snatched at the empty air over her left shoulder.

"Gotcha," he said. His smile was anything but reassuring. In his hands, squirming, was a grey goblin, about the size of a squirrel and as ugly as a gargoyle, with a squinched up caricature of an angry face.

"Mood goblin," the man said. "Impossible to spot unless you know what you're looking for. This one's been here for a while. It won't trouble you again." And he walked away, carrying the angry creature with him. As she sat back down, she thought that the last thing that man needed was anything to make him angrier.

She glanced up in surprise as the sun came out, her mood lifting for the first time in months. She found herself smiling for no reason at all. And though she often wondered, she never did find out who the man was.


End file.
